I have been following every once and a while the Yeson voice surgery posts and are quite fascinated with them. So much so that I have scheduled my surgery. I have had every thing done all ready surgery wise. Till this VFS came up. My question is out to the post-op girls. How many are satisfied with their results? I reckon I am looking for some reassurance that I am indeed not wasting my wages with Yeson. I have read and heard some brilliant results and some not so brilliant results. My voice passes all the time and I am stealth but I am still very self conscious of it. I have good days and bad and it is easily becomes knackered. Any opinions or advise would be lovely!

Hi there

I had surgery in April.

My surgery was a success in that the vocal chord has successfully been shortened by 1/3 (recently had it checked and all healed nicely).
My voice was just passable prior to surgery (gender neutral)  but it got tired as the day went on or it needed warming up etc before entering conversation.

So far, the pitch is no where near where I expected it to be, in fact I have not gained any additional pitch at all since having the surgery done (confirmed by my speech therapist).

For me the plus points of having the surgery are (as at 3 months post op):-

Voice sounds clearer, resonance is better.

Bad points:-

No increase in pitch at all to date (confirmed by speech therapist)

I am doing the vocal exercises but do this as a warm up now as I do not feel doing this alone is helping me so I combine this with my previous speech therapy material to try to help (as recommended by my speech therapist).

Overall, I am rather disappointed with the results as I was expecting my speaking voice to be better at 3 months as I have seen the videos at 2 months post op and they were amazing and mine is no where that good.

I have not given up and I am continuing with the voice exercises and speech therapy material but I am still having to attend speech therapy sessions despite the surgery.

Hope this is of some use as I do feel people need to share the negatives here as well as the positives of this surgery.

x

Joanne, so you managed on your own? If so then well done! Could it be that this surgery does not increase pitch beyond what voice therapy can achieve? I'm actually fine with this, as long as the lowest pitch pre-op is raised post-op.

Quote from: Nicolette on July 14, 2014, 05:01:58 PM
Joanne, so you managed on your own? If so then well done! Could it be that this surgery does not increase pitch beyond what voice therapy can achieve? I'm actually fine with this, as long as the lowest pitch pre-op is raised post-op.

I have that impression. The surgery seems to change the pitch of the original voice , not the pitch of the trained voice. So if you are using a trained and elevated voice already, the surgery will not increase pitch but make the voice sound better, clearer and it should be easiert to use that voice or even that what was the trained voice before now is your untrained (relaxed) voice.

Joanne28, would that describe it well?
Is it more relaxed and easier now to use the voice in a female pitch range whereas you had to use some more effort and control before? Did you have issues with dropping down inpitch involuntarily in some situations and this has become impossible now? Thos would be the benefits that I think are achievable.

If you had a 220 Hz trained voice before - I doubt the surgery would change that. But to speak at 220 Hz without any effort just doing the same thing you would have dont previously to do a "male voice" - that would be neat. Is it like that, Joanne - if not, how would you describe it? Thanks

Hi

So far my readings are identical post and pre op for natural speaking voice and trained voice.

My natural speaking voice is 157 and my trained voice is still 172. I was hoping for a minimum 180 natural speaking and 210 trained voice so to date I have not found the surgery to increase the pitch any further from what I could achieve prior to the surgery 3 months ago.

This is my findings only to date, I am told it may or may not go up as months go by.

Luckily as my voice is gender neutral anyway, I can still get by ok but I was hoping for some more pitch to help with my confidence. maybe this surgery only helps is the pitch is very low below the 140 mark to start with?

Hope this is of some use.

x

@joanne28: so you were not told it could take up to six months before you started hearing the difference?

I was presented with a case where the patient didn't heat any change I. Voice before six months, but from that point and to 1 year the pitch raised exponentially.


-MegC

Hmm, Joanne that's interesting.  I'm almost a month post op now, and when I had the surgery Dr. Kim told me it would take longer for me to reach a satisfactory voice as I apperently had some trauma to my larynx when I was younger.  However, he did say I should start to see improvement at the 2-3 month mark and it should progress steadily for the next 6 months/year. 

There's another posting on the Yeson thread from Nicole(?) that says older women don't have the same success as younger women.  I surely hope she's wrong about that one since I fall in the "older" category... 

I can tell you the recovery sucks with the no talking for a month and the two month dietary restrictions.

Cheers and good luck:)
Kim

Thanks a million Joan for posting with honesty. The worst thing it must be to feel is if all that money was for nothing. But I do hope for the best for you. Think of it this way. If you hadn't completed the surgery you would have had the "what if" scenario always floating about your head. Jessie told me of a 92% satisfaction rating with an average pitch increase of 65 Hz. I am 35 and wondering if age would play into it. Again my voice isn't bad and I never get sir'ed but I have my good and bad days. My bf says my voice is fine but I think he doesn't realize the effort I put into it. Honestly from what I have read here it seems to have a 50% success rate. I have read of others with no improvement on here as well. For those of us that have trained our voices proper like, there may be only a wee improvement.... Jesus I hope I am wrong lol

Quote from: Damhnait on July 14, 2014, 10:32:02 PM
The worst thing it must be to feel is if all that money was for nothing.

a 50% success rate.

Well - the worst case for me would be to have almost the same voice but sound hoarse, breathy, tiny or loose a lot of volume - and pay all the money. So I guess a "no change" outcome would be bad, but not as bad as what I was always afraid of when hearing about voice surgery.

A 50% success rate would not be that great. I hope this is not true and the ones who seem to have no success now can in some time revise that.

I wonder, what are the factors to create a less than satisfactory result. The vocal chords are after all shortened, no doubt about that, so physics says the low frequencies should be gone and the higher ones more accessible. I also wonder why in some cases it takes just 2 months and in some cases it is claimed to take 6-12 months to get to a noticeable change.

Personally since I have a 110 Hz original voice, I would expect some change for sure, but I am not sure if my speaking voice would actually change so much. A plus of 65 Hz would give me 175, which is where I am at on some days with average speaking when I put a bit of effort into it. Maybe I will need the same more radical change as Jenny had (we should not forget that when thinking about Jenny as a comparison) - a 1/2 suture instead of a 1/3 suture. Dr Kim already warned me a bit that with the standard procedures and my voice history the result may take longer to develop and I may not reach a 100% female voice range. :\

I don't think it is hammered in quite enough that you still have to go through pretty extensive voice training if you want to take advantage of the new vocal cord length.

As others have said the real benefits are ease of pitch increase, removal of lower pitches & overtones, and timbre of the voice is much softer & more feminine overall.

It makes a huge difference to the sound of the voice. When excellent voice training is done beforehand, pretty much the only benefits are the built in ones.

In my case, my regular speaking voice was just not there at all... I couldn't break into my female voice whatsoever. When my lower tones were removed, I was forced to relearn and incorporate the bit of voice training I had done.. and I worked incredibly hard on this aspect. I think that is what gave me a result that I am so pleased with. I was incredibly determined to get it right from the moment I started speaking again. And luckily I live with several cis females with very diverse ranges of voices. For a while I was just listening and trying to emulate sometimes. It taught me so much just listening and trying new things out.

Now I don't even think about my voice. When not reading the rainbow passage, it is definitely lower. When not in front of a camera it is definitely lower. When on the phone, it is higher. When talking to my parents, it is lower. When talking to people I don't know, it is higher. Every situation is different.

The important thing is to be understanding that it still takes a ton of relearning on your part. It is by no means a magical surgery that fixes or changes everything by a physical mechanism. The voice after all is integrated in an incredibly cognitive way. They go hand in hand with speech. You won't have a good result if both aspects haven't been touched... and no surgery is able to fix or modify your vocal habits- that has to be done on your own.

Anyway I have been trying to stress this more and more now, because I do see a lot of people possibly going there thinking it is a magic surgery that fixes every aspect and that they will come out with a perfectly feminine voice... no effort at all. This is simply not the case, and it never will be for any VFS surgery (I don't think). Every one is going to have a large aspect of associated vocal training

I am very interested to see the results of Dr. Haben's approach, who seems to combine tensioning the vocal cords similar to CTA (I think) as well as anterior web creation (similar to what Yeson does just with a laser).

Mostly I am curious to see what the difference of also applying tension via the voice box does.

Hi Jenny

Quote from: Jennygirl on July 15, 2014, 04:13:57 AM
I am very interested to see the results of Dr. Haben's approach, who seems to combine tensioning the vocal cords similar to CTA (I think) as well as anterior web creation (similar to what Yeson does just with a laser).

I am still not convinced he does anterior web creation / Wendler glottoplasty - the description was too vague...

Quote from: Jennygirl on July 15, 2014, 04:09:13 AM
As others have said the real benefits are ease of pitch increase, removal of lower pitches & overtones, and timbre of the voice is much softer & more feminine overall.

Thats perfect - For me this would be a good result - maybe I would expect some sort of automatic pitch increase when doing no effort to raise pitch. This seems to happen sometimes but sometimes not.

QuoteIn my case, my regular speaking voice was just not there at all... I couldn't break into my female voice whatsoever. When my lower tones were removed, I was forced to relearn and incorporate the bit of voice training I had done.. and I worked incredibly hard on this aspect

So you had to learn really hard to use your voice at a higher pitch but post op it was easier? Of course all the other aspects of voice training are there as well and I think they are sometimes really hard - resonance and prosody...

QuoteNow I don't even think about my voice. When not reading the rainbow passage, it is definitely lower. When not in front of a camera it is definitely lower. When on the phone, it is higher. When talking to my parents, it is lower. When talking to people I don't know, it is higher. Every situation is different.

Not thinking about is , thats the big goal. I was actually watching myself recently in the past months and noticed the same pattern in sutaional pitches. On the telephone I sometimes go up in pitch by several notes, which is funny as I drop in pitch after the initial few sentences. Same with meeting new people. My voice trainer noted that as well. Seems to be quite a common thing to do [/quote]

Hi girls

Thank you for all your goodwill messages, they are much appreciated x

I was told that the increase in my pitch would be most noticeable at the 2-3 month mark but would continue to improve therefter for 12 months. I've not seen any improvement in the pitch yet at 3 months but I am hopeful for the future.

I am continuing with speech therapy and I am also doing the voice exercises that Yeson gave me twice daily and I am determined to get my voice right (I know that the fold has worked and healed nicely as I have had it scoped recently). I do agree that this is not a miracle procedure and I do feel that you do need to be quite determined in the speech therapy afterwards, it should not be seen as a quick fix and needs to be combined with voice training.

I do feel that even if the success rate was say 50% for this surgery, this is still better than any other voice feminisation surgery and the benefits are greater with no scar and the very neat work that Dr Kim does, he is extremely precise and I have no damage on my chords at all, I could have gone somewhere else and they could have totally butchered me, this is not the case with Dr Kim.

So do I regret having the surgery?? Probably not is my answer, my voice does sounds clearer and the resonance has definitely improved if nothing else, just keeping my fingers crossed I can get the increased pitch.

Jo x 

Aye, Jenny you had such a profound change. I watched your video the middle of last year in Thailand recovering from SRS. After I saw it I realized ah Jesus yet another surgery added to the list lol....

Joan ah you'll improve. IT will take time. Maybe not such a profound change as with some but certainly an improvement. Jen's bang on, its a combination of practice and the surgery. One complements the other. I think some believe it a cure all.

I have had no formal voice coach. I am self taught and quite determined at what I put my mind to something. Though I was about as girly as ya get which was unfortunate for my lovely childhood and drove my mother mental. It just came to me easy. I known others that have struggled. Sure, I am lucky in a way.

The wee thought if I was fortunate enough the get a good result from VFS it would be absolutely brilliant. My question is, now Jenny, you had 1/2 your vocal cords tied up but it seems Dr. Kim normally only ties up 1/3 these days for most patients possibly out of caution?

Hi everyone, I just wanted to let you know my 5 month update.

It was a slow start for me, I was expecting almost immediate results.

This may not happen for you but my voice is now definitely so much better than before.

3 months ago, speaking voice 150 - speaking voice now 185 
3 months ago, reading voice 152 - reading voice now 205 
3 months ago, telephone voice 170, telephone voice now 182 

I have to say that I am over the moon and my voice now passes 100% female.

For all you girls wanting immediate results, forget it.

What you get is the ability to talk in a more female manner, its a case of combining speech therapy and working with your new vocal chords.

Its taken determination and 5 months but I am a happy girl and Yeson advise me they expect my pitch to increase further over the next 7 months.

Just though I'd keep you all updated, its a big thumbs up for me 

Jo xx 

So happy for you Joanne,
I am working on my voice now.. going full time in a couple months.. I kind of waited too long I think.. Its so hard.. my natural is about 155 so not too low but being natural so hard.
I am looking into surgery after first of year for sure..
Carrie

Thanks Carrie and best wishes to you.

Jo xx

congrats

Quote from: Joanne28 on September 11, 2014, 12:08:36 PM
What you get is the ability to talk in a more female manner, its a case of combining speech therapy and working with your new vocal chords.

So does the surgery make that easiert at least? I mean, the ability to talk in a female manner is something everyone somehow has - with training or with surgery and speech therapy is always a good idea - What if you now speak at a relaxed voice without what you do in speech therapy. Will the voice drop then again? I ask, because one of the main features of the surgery supposedly is that one should not need to control pitch so much anymore - is that true for you? What was your focus in speech therapy ?

Hi Anjaq

My voice will not drop before like it did pre-surgery. i.e I could feminise my voice but on occasion it would let me down and would go really low. This does not happen now and my absolute lowest voice is much higher than before.

When doing speech therapy, I can make my voice sound too high now, so what I actually do is now bring it down slightly.
I also find I have a lot more control in my voice now, I can lower and higher tones much more easily and generally my voice sounds clearer than before.

Give it time, it can take a year to get things to settle and don't forget to keep practising.

Hope this helps.
x